Discussion in the Sejm on the “Pilot” Law Postponed
This time, the meeting of the Sejm committee on the amendments to the telecom and broadcasting law was postponed until next Tuesday. Why is that?
The session of the Sejm Committee on Digitisation, Innovation, and Modern Technologies scheduled for Thursday, 19 January, at 11:00 am was not held. The MPs were to work on the governmental bill on the Electronic Communications Law. The meeting of the Commission was canceled on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday, a new date for the meeting was set for Tuesday, 24 January. The date change was to be requested by the governmental side, which, as we have unofficially learned, has been working on amendments. This is another time when the date of the meeting on the Electronic Communications Law has been changed.
The first time, the meeting was convened for 11 January and canceled when the proposal was made at the Sejm that the work on the Act should be referred to the Culture and Media Committee instead of the Digitisation Committee. The next day, the MPs voted to reject this proposal. The Electronic Communications Law is two years late, and the version proposed by the government has been controversial among businesses and experts. Organizations that represent pay TV operators and telecoms publish materials or opinions criticizing the bill and defending the status quo nearly daily.
The most discussed issue is the so-called lex remote, namely amendments to the Act on the National Broadcasting Council. The list of mandatory channels distributed on cable networks and satellite platforms (the so-called must carry, must offer principle) is to change to promote channels of the public broadcaster. Another important element for the platforms is the proposed obligation to enable the selection of channels in the a la carte model.
Pay TV operators who earn from selling channels in bundles today have expressed alarm that this is a “bomb” thrown into their market because they would have to rebuild the market from scratch. They argue that there are no countries where the a la carte model would be forced by law and where it would operate on a larger scale. Such information can be found, among others, in a report published on Thursday by Arthur D. Little, a consulting firm. “A la carte offers cannot be summarized because no such form of sales exists on any of the comparable markets,” reads the presentation.
The main countries of Europe and the United States were analyzed. Operators expect that the a la carte offer would be more expensive and would eliminate some of the channels from the market. This would mainly apply to niche channels, including local news stations.